G20 Los Cabos Leaders' Summit closes, with new agreements reached

LOS CABOS, Mexico, June 19 (Xinhua) -- The seventh Leaders' Summit of the Group of Twenty, or G20, ended here in Los Cabos, a coastal resort in Mexico, Tuesday afternoon, closing a two-day session, with G20 leaders agreeing to issues including controling European crisis and generating global growth.

While addressing a press conference held following the closure of the summit Tuesday, Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared the G20 Los Cabos summit a success and detailed agreements agreed by G20 leaders at the summit.

According to Calderon, one important achievement with the G20 Los Cabos Leaders' Summit was signing of the Action Plan of Los Cabos for Growth and Jobs, followed by agreements reached in ensuring an increase in financial resources available to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for 456 billion U.S. dollars, restoring growth through acting under free market principles and rejecting protectionism, stepping up regulatory framework and making progress in creating a new institutional framework for Financial Stability Board to ensure a secure financial system and sustained growth, improving financial inclusion, enhancing food security and promoting green growth as a priority of the G20 agenda.

With the Plan of Action in Los Cabos, G20 leaders have made commitments to the following aspects: to address decisively the situation in the euro area, to ensure global financial stability, to strengthen demand and economic growth and the generation of jobs, to focus monetary policy to maintain price stability and sustain global economic recovery, to ensure fiscal consolidation in advanced economies, to ensure that emerging markets maintain a solid growth path and sustainable, and resist protectionism and keep markets open to international trade, said the Mexican president.

The group also issued a declaration after the summit.

The seventh G20 Los Cabos Leaders' Summit was attended by heads of state or government representing 19 nations of the group's 20 members, plus leaders representing European Union, as well as leaders from major international organizations, including the United Nations, IMF, and from a number of countries being invited by Mexico, the host nation.

During the past two days of the summit, world leaders also discussed poverty, education, environment, in addition to issues concerning the global economic situation, trade protectionism, financial stability and food security.

In a speech delivered at the summit's first plenary session held Monday, Chinese President Hu Jintao elaborated on China's viewpoints on problems plaguing the world economic development.

He called on the world's 20 leading industrialized and developing economies to seek new progress while ensuring stability.

Hu said that while there has been some improvement in growth prospects, the world economy is still facing prominent destabilizing factors and uncertainties.

"Faced with this situation, we need to consolidate what we have achieved in countering the financial crisis, and maintain economic and social stability and development," he said. "At the same time,we should endeavor to make new progress while ensuring stability."

The Chinese president also presented a more detailed five-point proposal, urging the G20 members to be firmly committed to promoting steady recovery of the world economy.

The G20 groups Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the Republic of Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, as well as the European Union.

It was created in December 1999 in response to the financial crises affecting the emerging economies in the late 1990s.

Confronted with a global financial crisis, heads of state or government of the G20 members met for the first time in Washington in November 2008 to work out an action plan to prevent the financial system and the global economy from collapsing.

Since then, leaders of the G20 members met regularly: in London in April 2009, Pittsburgh in September 2009, Toronto in June 2010, Seoul in November 2010 and Cannes in November 2011.

At the last summit in Cannes, specific measures were agreed upon under the Cannes Action Plan for Growth and Jobs in order to ensure global economic growth. The leaders made progress in reforming the international monetary system, and the euro-zone crisis was also a key topic of discussion.

The G20, which accounts for 90 percent of global output and two thirds of the world's population, has become the premier forum for economic and financial cooperation.

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